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Leading Through Uncertainty: Risk and Decision-Making in a Nonlinear World
- Julien Haye
- Mar 28
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 30
In times of crisis, people often look to leaders for clarity. But in today’s environment—where risk is no longer linear and disruption is a constant—clarity is not always available. The more interconnected the world becomes, the more unpredictable it gets.
The question is no longer
“How do we return to normal?” but “How do we lead when normal is constantly shifting?”
This article builds on our recent reflections on ethical leadership, speak-up cultures, and cultural intelligence, and draws insight from our conversation with Roger Spitz to explore what it means to lead through uncertainty—not just reactively in crisis, but proactively in complexity.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
From Crisis Response to Complexity Competence
Crisis management frameworks traditionally emphasise control: stabilise, assess, respond, recover. They assume a return to a steady state.
But the ground has shifted.
What used to be periodic disruptions are now permanent features of the landscape. COVID-19 showed us that reactive, control-based responses are easily outpaced by global interdependencies. Those leaders who succeeded weren’t the ones with perfect answers, but those who stayed curious, adaptive, and accountable—even when the terrain kept changing.
We need to move beyond containment to complexity thinking—embracing uncertainty as a defining condition of modern leadership.
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The Risk of Linear Thinking in a Nonlinear World
Linear thinking offers comfort. It assumes stability, predictability, and a clear path from cause to effect. Traditional risk management has long leaned on this logic—classifying risks by type, assigning owners, quantifying likelihood, and building controls.
But the world no longer works that way.
We now operate in a nonlinear risk environment—where second- and third-order effects, feedback loops, and systemic interdependencies dominate. Think of climate change, digital misinformation, financial contagion, or AI governance. These risks don’t play by siloed rules. Their impacts aren’t just exponential—they’re entangled.
What makes this shift dangerous is that our leadership and risk cultures still often default to linearity: treat complexity as a problem to break down, control, and solve. But the more we try to force simplicity onto complexity, the more brittle our strategies become.
This shift—from risk as something to measure to something to anticipate and navigate—has profound implications.
It challenges how we:
Train our leaders and teams (do we reward certainty, or curiosity?)
Design governance and decision-making frameworks (are they built to adapt?)
Assess leadership success (is it based on predictability or adaptability?)
In a nonlinear world, good decisions may not lead to good outcomes. And bad outcomes may not be due to bad decisions. This is uncomfortable—but essential to understand if we are to lead effectively through uncertainty.
The response is not to double down on control, but to develop a new leadership capacity—what we call complexity competence.
What Great Leaders Do Differently in Uncertainty
1. They stay anchored in values, not just plans.
In such complex environment, strategy focuses on the direction of travel, while ensuring the roadmap is adaptable. Leaders who rely solely on prescriptive plans often find themselves paralysed when conditions change. Those grounded in values like integrity, transparency, fairness, can navigate ambiguity without losing their ethical compass.
This links directly to our recent article on Ethical Leadership in Risk Management, where we explored how values-based decision-making provides strategic clarity even when the future doesn’t.
2. They embrace dissent and diversity of thought.
Uncertainty multiplies blind spots. Leaders who silence critique or surround themselves with likeminded voices increase exposure to risk. In our earlier discussion on Speak-Up Culture, we showed how silence breeds fragility. In contrast, high-performing teams, those with psychological safety, surface challenges early and navigate change together.
Spitz emphasises that leaders must cultivate “cognitive and cultural diversity” not as a compliance exercise, but as a strategic necessity for resilience.
3. They make reversible decisions.
This all means that waiting for perfect information is a liability. Great leaders make decisions that are iterative and reversible. This echoes Roger’s insight that leaders need “dynamic foresight”—the capacity to act with partial information while leaving room to adjust course.
This aligns with risk management’s evolution from static risk registers to living frameworks: ones that learn, adapt, and evolve.
Decision-Making Frameworks for Volatility
In an unpredictable world, leadership cannot rely on a single decision-making model. Instead, it requires a portfolio of tools—flexible enough to work under pressure, but robust enough to incorporate uncertainty, dissent, and systems thinking.
These tools are not about creating false precision. They are about supporting better judgment, especially when conditions are ambiguous and time is limited.
Here are three powerful approaches:
1. OODA Loop (Observe – Orient – Decide – Act)
Originally developed for military pilots, the OODA loop has become a go-to mental model for making agile decisions in volatile situations. It enables leaders to stay ahead by cycling rapidly through:
Observe: Scan for new data, anomalies, and weak signals.
Orient: Make sense of information in context—what does it mean for us?
Decide: Choose a course of action quickly, even if incomplete.
Act: Implement, then loop back to observe results.
In highly dynamic environments—such as cyber incidents, public crises, or geopolitical shifts—speed of iteration becomes more important than initial accuracy. The OODA loop encourages leaders to avoid paralysis and adapt in real time.
2. Pre-Mortems and Red Teaming
Where traditional risk planning focuses on what could go wrong, pre-mortems begin with the assumption that failure has already happened—and ask: why?
This unlocks fresh thinking by:
Reversing hindsight bias
Creating space for candid conversations about vulnerabilities
Highlighting hidden assumptions and blind spots
To learn more, please review the Aevitium’s downloadable pre-morten toolkit.
Red Teaming takes it further. It deliberately introduces structured dissent into decision-making. A “Red Team” is empowered to challenge assumptions, simulate adversaries, or pressure-test proposals.
Both methods work best in environments where dissent is safe and challenge is welcomed, not penalised.
3. Complexity Mapping
In a world of entangled risks, mapping out interconnected dependencies—across systems, actors, and processes—is essential.
Complexity mapping visualises:
Cross-functional impacts of key decisions
Feedback loops and delays
Unintended consequences and non-obvious touchpoints
This can be done through causal loop diagrams, network maps, or systems thinking workshops. The goal isn’t to model everything—it’s to make visible what’s often invisible.
Culture Is the Precondition
Yet no framework, no matter how elegant, will work in a culture where people are afraid to speak up.
If challenge is seen as disloyalty,
If mistakes are punished rather than examined,
If decisions are driven by politics, not principles—
Then even the best tools will fail.
This is why your risk function must evolve beyond policy enforcement. It must become a cultural catalyst—facilitating difficult conversations, elevating silent knowledge, and embedding trust in how decisions are made and escalated. Without cultural alignment, decision-making frameworks are just theatre.
Conclusion: Leading Through Uncertainty Is a Cultural Choice
Leadership in this world is no longer about being the most certain voice in the room. It’s about being the most trusted, the most adaptive, and the most anchored in purpose—especially when the path forward isn’t clear.
The leaders who thrive in complexity:
Prioritise ethical and long-term decision-making
Create space for challenge, dissent, and dialogue
Stay grounded in principles amid disruption
Treat complexity as a design feature, not a flaw
This isn’t just a leadership philosophy—it’s a risk management imperative.
And it doesn’t stop at the top. Your risk function—too often viewed as a control mechanism—must evolve into a cultural catalyst:
A facilitator of difficult conversations.
A translator of uncertainty.
A builder of trust in how decisions are surfaced, challenged, and owned.
Without cultural alignment, even the best decision frameworks are just theatre.
In the final chapter of Risk Within, we explore this transformation—how risk teams can move from enforcing compliance to enabling strategy, embedding psychological safety, and guiding leadership in a world that refuses to hold still.
Because in times of crisis, your culture is your operating system.
The question is: have you invested in the right architecture?
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What does “leading through uncertainty” mean?
Leading through uncertainty refers to the ability of leaders to make ethical, strategic decisions in complex and unpredictable environments. It involves adapting quickly, staying grounded in core values, and creating a culture where challenge, dissent, and dialogue are encouraged.
2. Why is linear thinking risky in today’s environment?
Linear thinking assumes predictability and clear cause-effect relationships. In a nonlinear world—where risks are interconnected, fast-moving, and often systemic—linear thinking can lead to blind spots, delayed action, and brittle strategies.
3. What is complexity competence?
Complexity competence is the ability to lead effectively in dynamic, uncertain environments. It involves pattern recognition, comfort with ambiguity, ethical anchoring, collaborative foresight, and adaptive governance. This is explored further in Risk Within.
4. What frameworks help with decision-making under uncertainty?
Key frameworks include:
OODA Loop for iterative action
Pre-mortems and Red Teaming for challenging assumptions
Complexity Mapping for visualising interdependencies and feedback loops
Each tool supports more resilient and adaptive decision-making.
5. How does risk management need to evolve in a complex world?
Risk management must shift from being compliance-focused to culture-driven. It should empower transparency, surface silent risks, and become a strategic enabler—guiding ethical decision-making and supporting leadership through uncertainty.
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